-
« Home
Pages
-
Categories
-
Archives
http://media.www.duclarion.com/media/storage/paper481/news/2008/09/30/Features/Secrets.Revealed.Through.Art-3459696.shtml#cp_article_tools
Who is the Author?
“Who is the author ?” is a question that constantly comes up in contemporary culture and in contemporary art discussions. This question certainly comes up regularly in all of my classes. So, “Who is the author?” This question is one that I don’t think will ever truly be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. Lev Manovich looks into this topic extensively while examining: collaboration, remixing, sampling, and open sourcing.
Manovich writes about “collaboration” and how it is natural to work together in groups because people do have similar interests and goals. Collaboration itself builds a “social culture.” Due to common interests, people come together to start a “project” or a “series of projects” which consequently helps form working “networks.” These “networks” allow collaboration and the easy exchange of ideas. The “networks” have helped build our contemporary culture.
Yet, collaboration ultimately causes the intersection of many different facets to timely come together, but most importantly: the author and the next user. The author creates the work, but she/he never really knows exactly what the next user is going to make, create or produce; therefore, the result cannot really be called a “collaboration”. Yet, ironically the author does in fact create the “tool” that the next user takes or uses to then evolve it into their own next creation. Sometimes, the author “allows” the next user to feel like the “real artist” or the “originator” by letting him/her select from several menus. However, due to this relatively effortless interactivity of new media, “miscommunication” can easily take place.
Manovich provides an interesting example of dealing with this predictable “miscommunication.” He writes that film producers have started using focus groups in order to assist them in editing their films to make sure that the narrative is comprehendible. Using the “feedback” of the focus groups allows the editors to re-edit the film work in order to make sure the film reaches its full potential. Interestingly and ironically, even the edit could be seen as a “collaborative work” between focus groups and film producers.
The definition of “remixing” has become diffused over recent years. “Remixing” has been traditionally used throughout the DJ culture. Remixing became a standard practice when multi-track mixing became readily available. Throughout the years, the term has become broader and refers to any “reworking” of an “original” piece of music.
In the last several years, people have tried “remixing” in other diverse contemporary mediums. The “remixing” becomes complicated, particularly with copyright issues, when the “remixing” can be interpreted as theft or stealing of another’s work. Interesting points get raised when filmmakers, visual artists, photographers, architects and Web designers all “remix” existing prior works, but do not openly admit it (5). The term that is being used for these types of circumstances is “appropriation.” Although, this term was originally used in the “art world” context, where it was commonly applied to post-modern artists, it is now being broadly used to apply to all types of visual media works. Manovich believes that “remixing” is a better term than “appropriation” because it refers to or communicates “reworking” older or prior works. I personally agree with Manovich.
“Sampling” helps create collages. “We can say that with sampling technology, the practices of montage and collage that were always central to twentieth century culture, became industrialized (6).” Manovich believes that the terms “montage” and “collage” come from “literary” culture and should not be expanded to describe other medias such as electronic music. However, I believe that the term “collage” should in fact be used to describe electronic music, because electronic music has traditionally been created like a “collage.”
With all of these above-referenced ideas combined: “collaboration”, “remixing”, “sampling”, and “appropriation”, modern technology has prolifically created “open sourcing.” “Open sourcing” allows people to further develop what others have already done simply by changing codes. Yet, “open sourcing” leads to licensing issues which become applicable to the rights and responsibilities of the modifier.
I personally believe that dealing with the issues of licensing is a positive rather than a negative result. Although it is difficult to deal with licensing issues, I believe it is important for the original creators to have recourse through the licensing agreements. By having licensing agreements, it forces a situation where the use of the predecessor’s work is more fair for both sides: for the adapter or modifier and for the original licensor.
In conclusion, I agree with Manovich, that new technology desperately needs a new vocabulary. I love Poscardt’s quote that Manovich ends with: “However much, quoting, sampling and stealing is done, in the end, it is the old subjects that undertake their own modernization. Even examination of technology and the conditions of productions do not rescue aesthetics from finally having to believe in the author. He just looks different.”
So the question: “Who is the Author?” is now being answered by a newly adopted vocabulary.
Your Secret Here is a commentary on the confidential nature of coded and encrypted communication and the growing concern for privacy and protecting our identities. This age of electronic information has created a fear of public exposure of private life, thus building distance, dishonesty and secrets among neighbors. Your Secret Here urges you to participate through writing or speaking your secrets in a confessional booth, rendering your identity temporarily vulnerable. A conflicting tension is created by both the fear and the desire of being exposed. With the popular use of online social networking venues, such as Facebook, MySpace, Post Secret and Blogspot, private lives are willingly exposed. As you participate, this tension is addressed and exploited. The spoken secrets will be aurally shredded through audio manipulation. The written secrets can either be posted on the gallery wall, or shredded and dispersed. Finally, we urge you to participate in a cathartic ritual with your shredded secrets. You are invited to walk around the space, dispersing your secrets among others. As the carefully arranged floor design is eventually swept away, so are our secrets.
The Language of New Media, by Lev Manovich, questions: “What is new media?” The most popular belief of what constitutes new media is: media using the computer. The computer revolution has effected communication in all aspects including: storage, calculations, manipulations, text, still images, moving images, sound, web and special construction.
The evolution of the computer actually started in the 1830’s when the computer was able to perform calculations on numerical data more proficiently than calculators and still able to store images, data, and sound. In 1833, Charles Babbage invented punch cards where data and instructions were retained. Along with previous inventions and more modern inventions, by the 1890’s, individuals had the capability of storing images, creating image sequences, sounds, and texts, all in different material forms: photographic plates, film stock, and gramophone records. While this was going on, photographs were actually being put into motion and cinema had come alive, but both in their own ways, becoming “slaves” to the computer (25).
Media became “new media” when Daguerre’s Daguerrpetpe, Babbage’s Analytical Engine, Lumiere’s Cinemotographine and Hollerith’s Tabular all merged creating a wealth of new possibilities. Now, the computer could read numerical and pixel values, search image data, detect a short change in a movie, synthesize motion, and do much more. Computers went from being able to only reading analog media sources to being able to read digital. Media could become programmable. Society’s needs continued to effect the development of the computer. The computer and the culture became symbiotic: they directly affect each other.
What I found most interesting in this article was the principles of new media. Media objects have the same modular structure. Each can have different identities but are together assembled into a larger scaled object. By doing so, individual items can be changed or dissected, but yet, still remain the same entity. One of my favorite quotes in the book is, “Computers can pretend to be intelligent only by tricking us into using a very small part of who we are when we communicate with them (36).” The quote is followed by a pertinent example of people playing computer games against people or a computer, with the players not being able to tell the difference of whom or what they are playing against.
I also found the “myth of interactivity” very interesting wherein Manovich talks about “new media” being interactive while “old media” is fixed or static. We now press a button, connect to links, and we physically interact with the mediums or “are asked to mistake the structure of somebody else’s mind (programmer, designer, or director) for our own (61).” In the “Screen and the Body,” Manovich goes on to talk about the classic screen, which represents the past and is static, and then compares it to the real-time screen, which shows the present, motion, and interactivity. Manovich concludes: we still have not left the era of the screen. Which is so true, we might be totally touch screen but there still is screen.
“Your Secret Here” is an analogy of the confidential nature of coded, encrypted and self-destructing interpersonal communication and the growing concern about privacy and protecting our identity. This interactive installation urges the viewer to participate by writing or speaking their secret. The written secret will be shredded physically, visually, and aurally evoking an act of absolution.
In “Your secrets here” an individual is able to enter a confession booth and write down their secret. Then, the individual makes a choice; they can bring their secret to the shredder and shred away their burdens or they can publicly place there secret in the confinements of the gallery wall. If the individual shreds their secret, the secret while going through the shedder is being projected on the wall. This makes the publicizing or shredding of the secret physical but also visual.
These photos are the interactive in process.
Change
Technology constantly evolves. Changing at such a fast pace that it is difficult for the average individual to keep up. A Review of Remediation: Understanding New Media, a book co-authored by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, discusses new media and its history. Bolter and Grusin begin talking about the “wire” that connects individuals together through new media. An important point of their book is expressed in with the ideas that new media allows individuals to transcend time. The speed of “new media” forces old mediums (print, film, painting) to evolve through respectively reinventing themselves to stay contemporary. As a result both mediums are compelled to change to stay ahead of the other.
New media like internet, web cam, television, image, video games, graphic, texts, panels, and hyperlinks constantly demand our attention. The invention of virtual reality illustrates our attempt to transcend reality and experience hypermedacy by being in the same place as the object and the hypothetical time. In this reality we are surrounded by graphic objects that are supposed to create life-like experience without interruption. Nonetheless, the medium has inherent flaws as a result of image quality. The inaccuracy causes pixilation and a loss of detail. With time technology will only evolve to minimize this innate flaw. For example, when I graduated high school, a 3 mega pixel camera was a big deal, now an image of that size in the digital scope of things is of relatively poor quality.
It is important to critically analyze art that is developed through new media. Bolter and Grusin argue that the new mediums, “are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media (pg.14).” It is said that history is constantly repeating itself. They argue that new media is doing exactly what old medias always have done, constantly trying distinguish themselves as different or better than older media.
Today technology has fully evolved as living part of our modern culture. With the developmental stages behind us, technology has a strong foundation in our society that will likely involve itself in every aspect. Technology innovaters, such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and other industry leaders count on weaving technology into are life. The development of technology reveals that every medium is a medium inside a medium or built upon another medium. Bolter and Grusin refer to this phenomena as remediation: photography remediated painting, film remediated stage production and photography, and television remediated film, vaudeville, and radio. Everything medium has a predecessor and it is the job of the new medium to bite the fed it and gave it life by exceeding the ancestor’s abilities.
The article discusses some very interesting points about technology as a new media and the evolution of new media in general. I was particularly interested by the implications of technology to the way our society communicates amongst ourselves. Today, communication is instant and visual. Another point of interest in change in audience perspective based on newer media, in photography and painting the prospective is fixed and in film and television the point of view is set in motion. Computers are perhaps the newest innovation to the media circus, allowing the audience to personally work within a medium and instantly receive results of their choice.
Finally, hyperdependency is also dependent on our social construct of that particular media. The example of a rock concert being a hypermedicay experience as a result of the sound, light, and televised images really intrigued me. Some individuals believe they have an authentic experience where others remain distance seeing it as sinful for its hyperdendency experience. Art, like hypermedicay is all dependent on the viewer, who controls their art according their desires. The artist opinion loses weight in the technology crazed society of today thus, remapping the landscape which the foundation of art was created.
Questions: could we go over remediation as mediation of mediation and remediation as the inseparability of mediation and reality?
The Kaleidoscope in Washington Square Park
Fluorescent lights of many colors to the interior walls, ceilings, and floor of the Washington Square Park monument. The lights would be solar powered. The insulation will come on at night and will be motion activated to change colors and schemes briefly and randomly to stimulate the person who walks through.
The wash monument serves as the gateway between two parts of the city uptown and down. It is the Mecca of the down town area, as a result as people walk through they pass from the business life to the art/creative life. When we make transitions in life we experience a rift like a kaleidoscope of non linear colors, the time of unrest isn’t logical and it shouldn’t be. My piece highlights the Washington Park Monument as a gateway in the city between the creative and linear ways moreover the childish escape of a simple pleasure that can be associated with a transition period that has and requires no meaning but escapism.
